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A proposed curbside recycling plan drew lots of questions from Columbus City Council members last night in a hearing that left it unclear whether a key priority for Mayor Michael B. Coleman has the support it needs.

The mayor’s public-service director asked the council to take up legislation on Monday night to purchase the first $4 million in bins. But at the hearing’s end, City Council President Andrew J. Ginther said he wasn’t committing to a vote.

During nearly four hours of questions and testimony, Ginther and other council members pressed Coleman administration officials to detail the program’s costs, sort out claims about recycling rates and explain how the city would react if new technology made curbside recycling obsolete or other communities wanted to join in.

“We need to have a full understanding of the impact this will have on next year’s budget and the years ahead,” Ginther said after the hearing.

The mayor’s environmental steward, Erin Miller; his finance director, Paul Rakosky; and Public Service Director Mark Kelsey defended the program that they’ve been working on for two years, saying it is affordable, it’s the right thing to do for the environment and residents are demanding it.

The recycling portion of a five-year contract with Rumpke to collect yard waste and recyclables on alternating weeks at Columbus homes would cost $1.9 million to $2.3 million next year, after savings on fees to dump trash at the county landfill are figured in, Miller said. She said the city could save $13 million to $15 million in tipping fees at the landfill over five years.

Those savings are based on apples-to-apples studies of how many pounds the average household in other cities with similar programs recycled each year, she said.

Councilwoman Eileen Y. Paley called on Ron Mills, executive director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, which operates the landfill, to weigh in. Mills said a technology called a “dirty MRF,” for Material Recovery Facility and pronounced murf, could make curbside recycling obsolete in three to five years.

Kelsey disputed that, saying the technology — separating recyclables directly from residential garbage at a reasonable cost — could be 10 years or more away.

Mills said the city’s $9.5 million investment in recycling bins would not be needed if a dirty MRF could be installed. Rakosky said the bins have a service life of 10 years, and they’d likely be at the end of their days by the time such technology became available.

Mills also called into question the way other cities calculate their recycling rates. Once yard waste, scrap tires and other nontraditional recyclables are taken out, he said, Columbus’ current 8 percent recycling rate for traditional recyclables doesn’t look bad next to New York City’s (12 percent) or Detroit’s (3 percent).

Mills’ comments didn’t sit well with some in the crowd of recycling supporters at the hearing.

“Asking SWACO to give you statistics on recycling is a little like asking the fox to count the chickens for you,” said Ian McConnell, a former member of the University Area Commission.

City savings on dumping trash at the landfill would come out of SWACO’s budget. Michael C. Mentel, who resigned as City Council president last year to become SWACO’s chief attorney, was at the hearing but did not speak.

Coleman’s spokesman, Dan Williamson, said the council has been part of talks about the recycling program since Coleman promised it in 2010.

“If they don’t support this, they are saying that they know something that every other city that does curbside recycling doesn’t know,” he said.